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Saturday, June 16, 2018

In
2013 I saw the film adaptation Michael Kohlhaas
at the French Film Festival in Hong Kong and was very impressed with the
powerful theme of one man’s obsessive quest for justice and the intensely haunting
cinematography and acoustics.

Recently
I saw a GR friend’s review of the novella and was lured to read it. Styled in a
chronicle format, the novella is written with impassive detachment, which
actually adds to the poignancy of the story that is based on a true event in 16th
century Germany (the real person was named Hans Kohlhaas).

Michael
Kohlhaas is a horse dealer leading a peaceful life on the border between Saxony
and Brandenburg. One day when he takes his horses to a fair as usual, passing
through territories that belong to a nobleman von Tronka, he is demanded for
the first time to pay tolls and to show his pass. When he fails to produce a
pass, his two black horses are forcibly detained as collateral. He leaves his
servant behind to tend to the horses while he returns home to see about the
issuance of a pass. In his absence, the two horses are made to work the fields
and reduced to pitiable state, and his servant savagely beaten up. He tries to
seek redress in a Saxony court but his charge is dismissed. His wife decides to
help him take the petition to the ruler of Saxony, but is brutally wounded by
the ruler’s guards and dies a little later.

Blinding
rage spurs Kohlhaas to take revenge against von Tronka, which act balloons into
insurgence against the state. The aristocrats decide that Kohlhaas must be punished
for his outrageous actions, despite the attempt by Martin Luther and the ruler
of Brandenburg to save him.

The
climax comes at the very end, which involves a piece of secret paper that
Kohlhaas holds, that concerns the fate of the ruler of Saxony.

The
novella begs the question: what do you do when you find that the written law
doesn’t protect your rights and interests?

I
found this novella to be a compelling read and am giving it 4 stars, although I
would say that the 2013 movie starring Mads Mikkelsen is even better.

Monday, June 11, 2018

I
had never read anything about the history of Italy’s unification (called the
“Risorgimento”), and was glad to read this charming novel. The story is set in
1860s Sicily and accounts for the personal trajectory of a Sicilian aristocrat
Fabrizio Salina as he gets caught up in the social and political storm that would
bring democracy and irrevocable changes to the various disparate Italian states.

Written
in a lush style embellished by similes and metaphors, the story is told through
a narrator whose voice is tinged at once with nostalgic melancholy and dry
humor, chiefly from Fabrizio Salina’s viewpoint. In face of imminent upheavals
instigated by revolutionaries led by Giuseppe Garibaldi who aims at uniting the
Kingdoms of Sicily and Naples (ruled by the French Bourbons) with the Kingdom
of Sardinia (ruled by the State of Savoy), the protagonist, who belongs to the
old ruling class, adopts a pragmatic attitude by persuading his Sicilian people
to lend support to the new democratic regime. He also encourages his ambitious
nephew Tancredi in his scheme to marry Angelica, the dazzling daughter of a
nouveau riche from the peasant class, even though he is aware that his youngest
daughter is madly in love with Tancredi.

Much
of the novel is devoted to exhibiting Fabrizio’s emotional torment, moral
struggles and psychological turmoil that arise from the unsettling external paradigm
shift, signifying the inexorable demise of an era, to which he is irredeemably
attached.

Perhaps
this passage reveals the essence of Fabrizio’s pride and agony:

It was useless to try to avoid the
thought, but the last of the Salinas was really he himself, this gaunt giant
now dying on a hotel balcony. For the significance of a noble family lies
entirely in its traditions, that is in its vital memories; and he was the last
to have any unusual memories, anything different from those of other families.

Monday, June 4, 2018

I am honored to be among the 20 Richmondites (and the only writer) profiled in Richmond News' special feature "Best of Richmond" dated May 31, 2018. One question I was asked was which city I would compare Richmond to, and my answer was, your guessed it, Hong Kong. To me, both cities seem to share positive and negative traits. The positives would include a vibrant cosmopolitan culture, commercial success and cultural diversity; the glaring negatives would comprise affordable housing problem, acute materialism and lukewarm interest in literary reading.

I've dug out from my files the 2006 Richmond News interview about my non-fiction book Land and the Ruling Class in Hong Kong.

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About Me

Always fascinated with iconic but unsung females in Chinese history and legends, I cherish a dream of bringing them to the page. Chinese history and poetry, Jin Yong novels, English, French and Russian classics have colored my life and imagination.